‘Bollocks. You’re lying.’

Gregory chuckled. ‘Do you really believe Six wouldn’t sanction torture?’

‘I’m not an idiot. They’ve done some pretty dark shit in the past, I know. But they’ve got their limits. They would never agree to this.’

‘Why not? They’ve done far worse on this op.’

Something cold moved like a bayonet through his stomach. ‘What the fuck are you talking about?’

Gregory cocked an eyebrow. ‘Didn’t you know?’

‘Know what?’ Bowman demanded.

‘Six was behind the poisoning. In London. The attack on Freddie Lang. That was their handiwork.’

Bowman felt a cold chill on the nape of his neck. ‘No,’ he said. ‘No fucking way. They wouldn’t do that.’

‘Why do you think they haven’t identified the suspects yet? The middle of a royal wedding, all those people, and there’s not one witness? Not even the Russians could pull off something like that.’

Bowman couldn’t think straight, couldn’t breathe. His mind was reeling.

‘But . . . how?’

‘Six contracted the job out to a couple of ex-Regiment guys. They do all the wet work for the government. They got them into the hotel disguised as bodyguards or something.’

The chill ran like ice down Bowman’s back. He remembered the two men in the ballroom corridor. The face-mask strap dangling from the pocket. The absence of crucial CCTV footage.

Five has looked into it, Mallet had said. It’s a dead end. The cameras weren’t working.

‘How the fuck do you know this?’ Webb asked.

‘My handler told me,’ Gregory replied simply.

‘You’re working for Six?’ said Bowman.

Gregory nodded. ‘They approached me soon after I took the job. They wanted a second source close to the president, you see. To verify the information they were getting from David Lang. They suspected he might be feeding them bullshit. So they came to me. I’ve been working for them for a couple of years now.’

‘But why would they tell you about the poisoning?’ Casey said. ‘Six would keep something like that top secret, if it was true.’

Gregory said, ‘They didn’t have a choice. I was the one who tipped them off about that backstabbing bastard Lang.’

‘You knew about the meeting with the Russians?’

‘I’m the president’s chief of security, Josh. It’s my business to know everything that goes on around here.’ Gregory ran a hand down his beard. ‘I knew Lang was sneaking around, having lots of meetings with shady Russian businessmen. More than usual, anyway. So I had him followed by my people. We ran a huge surveillance operation on him. That’s when we realised Lang was double-dipping with the Kremlin. I heard about some big meeting in Monte Carlo and told my handler. Said they might want to look into it. Stop it from going ahead.’

‘And?’